


Heart of Morning

by sloppy



Series: Tin, Straw, and Fur [1]
Category: Captain Marvel (DC), DCU (Comics), Shazam (Comics)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-06-10
Updated: 2017-06-10
Packaged: 2018-11-12 06:39:41
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,146
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11156355
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sloppy/pseuds/sloppy
Summary: Gotham is no Fawcett. For one, the skyline’s legendary, alleyways notorious, and all is damp, gritty, seething. It’s a city that wakes at sundown. Meanwhile, a good boy like Billy Batson is in his soft pajamas by the time the lawns gets dewy in Fawcett, faint milk mustache ringing his upper lip, nodding off to nighttime podcasts.





	Heart of Morning

Gotham is no Fawcett. For one, the skyline’s legendary, alleyways notorious, and all is damp, gritty, seething. It’s a city that wakes at sundown. Meanwhile, a good boy like Billy Batson is in his soft pajamas by the time the lawns gets dewy in Fawcett, faint milk mustache ringing his upper lip, nodding off to nighttime podcasts.

Billy’s asking him through the line: “How’re you liking the big city life?”

“S’not big enough.”

The phone booth Freddy is in has got glass so old and scuffed the view outside is a black-grey blur. Tight, too, with his elbow jamming the door and the classic wires curling, tangled. The subway was brimful when he’d been on it two hours ago, a seated woman clearly rubbernecking his forearm crutches the whole time Freddy stood in the middle of the walkway.

“Hmm," he hums. “Mary misses you.”

“Mary, huh?”

“She’s on one of her hobbies kick.” There’s a sound like Billy is shifting his bedsheets, getting comfortable. “Said she’d start a garden, but all she bought were these flower bulbs and a spade and then went, ‘I think I’ll learn knitting instead.’”

“Get her on the League call roster,” Freddy says. Outside, a car swerves over to the right lane, headlights two yellow dots in his peripheral. “That’ll keep her more than busy.”

“I already tried. She thinks Fawcett needs at least one Marvel a time. She’s probably right.”

He leafs through the yellow pages on the podium, not looking for anything in particular. There are six Freemans in this zip code. Three Bromfields. Four Batsons. His finger drags down the numbers until he spots a sequence.

“She probably is.”

Fawcett is ranked in the top ten safest cities in America, and could survive weeks on end without a cape to supervise. Freddy knows Mary not like Billy knows Mary. She gets selfish at times, jealous, bratty. Billy’s all but blind to that. His adoration comes in swirls and waves, rose-tinted filter set to high. She’s his only family, and he’ll jump every hoop to keep her happy.

“You’ll hurt him bad one day,” Freddy’s told her once before. Billy was off buying milk, and before that there was an argument between the twins, something awfully mundane, but Freddy saw how her words made him curl.

Mary looked back at him regretfully, hands folded serenely on her lap, posed for a confessional. She always had that schoolgirl look about her, even though they’re in their late teens now, off-putting after this long. “That’s not what I want. But promise you’ll be there for him if I do. He’s always needed you, Freddy.”

Throughout the call, Billy’s voice is thick with drowsiness. Today it was a tsunami in Manila, an armed robbery at a Philadelphia gas station. Tomorrow is a far dream away. There’s a saying Freddy remembers, about it being quiet at the top, and every time he hears it he thinks of Billy and his signature smile, shy and boyish and lonely all at once. Captain Marvel needs no one. Billy is supposed to be different. All it takes is one look, and it should be obvious, clear as day.

“So,” Freddy starts, fishing, “it’s Mary who misses me.”

“That’s what I said.” A yawn fled from his end. “Gee, Fred, I forget you’re a handful. Don’t bother coming home anytime soon without that fixed.”

“Yeah, yeah,” Freddy says, smiling into the receiver.

Twenty minutes after the phone booth, he’s still grinning, a madman, cheeks aching from use. The train ride back is emptier, and a window seat has his name on it.

 

* * *

 

Freddy kept a beat up transistor radio underneath the shelving of his old newsstand, tuned in to the WHIZ station each afternoon. By the time Billy came on with the traffic report, Freddy would be out of a voice, having yelled himself hoarse advertising the stacks.

Newsstands are obsolete nowadays, everything gone digital. This summer internship at the Gotham Gazette teaches him that at least the words are still the same. He’s only a coffee runner at headquarters, but Freddy makes it work for him, projecting the image of a wide-eyed kid from the back of the woods; eager to please and easier to please. Sometimes he chats up the cubicles balancing a tray of expressos on the arm without the brace, smiling dumbly, and shoots a well-timed remark about the economic downturn after the new reform bill, or how Kord Industries stocks are lowering just enough to sweat about, or the Republican party, however they’re relevant.

His brown-nosing earns him a seat at a table. The investigative journalists show him how to get around public record databases, the crime sector has him filing leads firsthand, and Editor-in-Chief Mario Ito pats Freddy’s head each time he passes in the newsroom. Vicki Vale chucks him under the chin when she orders a decaf, and Freddy knows he’s made it.

Excluding work, he’s not close to getting used to much else. The sun is still eclipsed by perpetual clouds, cemented in place, but the heat is equivalent to a stone oven and bakes its citizens like yeasty dough. His rates for getting mugged down dim-lit streets double just for the limp in his walk. There are no kids outside playing, no joggers in the park. The nightlife consists of clubs or gangs or clubs fronting for gangs, and in the mix there’ll be a bat or two clobbering bad guys in the shadows.

The calls back to Fawcett happen less and less, over the weeks, so much so that Mary actually comes in costume through the window of his room one day, white and gold fluttering in the night breeze. She holds a to-go bag of Big Belly Burger in her hand and they have that for dinner on the rooftop of his apartment. The occasional silence between them is because Billy’s usually the source of their noise, though Freddy can admit Mary is decent company when she’s not in a mood. As Freddy chews his slider, he thinks he sees a dark figure on a gargoyle in the distance, but he blinks and then it’s gone, and they’re left with the faraway sirens and screams of Gotham downtown. 

That night Mary tells him Billy is just as stubborn as Freddy and boys are stupider than anything. He promises he’ll visit on the weekend.

 

* * *

 

Freddy isn’t that little kid crying out for his grandfather on a rickety boat anymore, but on days the old spinal injury visits like a toxic ex, joints in pure agony and back in dull pain, the boy lives on. The meds make him half-catatonic and everyone knows it’s hell to feel nothing at all. There’s a temporary cure. He drags himself out onto the roof, stares at the forever-grey sky, and says a single name.

The boy disappears when the lightning strikes.

 


End file.
